AW22

Soft Elegance. Jil Sander AW22

| Design & Culture by Ed

In a season when designers are desperately targeting Gen-Z, Jil Sander’s Lucie and Luke Meier made clothes for grown-ups. That kind of commitment breeds loyalty in women of a certain demographic and income bracket who feel left out of the fashion conversation (and still love Old Céline). “We were thinking about elegance,” Lucie said backstage. “We really wanted to focus on sculptural tailoring, almost couture-like, but we like this new energy, a very cropped silhouette.” The Jil Sander woman is wearing a wool skirt suit, its jacket sculpted with an hourglass volume and the skirt just peeking out from beneath its hem, or a slightly longer, flippier skirt with a cape-like jacket. Completing the silhouette are Chelsea boots with gold hardware, flat and sturdy. Dresses with the same above-the-knee proportion and flat bows at the shoulders and waist called to mind Pierre Cardin, whose death in late 2020 has precipitated new interest in his brand of 1960s minimalism. There were longer, softer lengths as well, including on a group of black dresses whose special details – a deep-v neckline, say, or voluminous bell sleeves – gave them a lot of cost-per-wear value. The Meiers have made handcrafts (like macramé and crochet) an essential part of their Jil Sander aesthetic. This season they pared that back, featuring only one print of astrological signs on drapey stretch jersey or quilted satin, choosing three-dimensional fabrics with surface appeal, like the bouclé on a pair of short dresses and the finer gauge knit of a long dress with fuzzy mohair sleeves. The exception was the guipure lace they used for a trio of long dresses, including one in a sensational shade of marigold. The white and black versions were shown with tailored single-breasted jackets, which is indeed a very elegant, very grown-up way to approach black-tie.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

Hotter Than Hell. Versace AW22

| Design & Culture by Ed

Versace is the only brand in Milan so far that has (at least) communicated on its social media solidarity with Ukraine and a call for peace. Donatella Versace did the same, which makes me love her even more. This is what independence from luxury conglomerates gives: the freedom of taking a stance.

Another great news: the autumn-winter 2022 collection is so, so good. The designer described the line-up as “an elastic band pulled tight and about to snap back with a build-up of energy”. It was an accurate illustration of how the hyper-glam Versace woman she designs for must feel after two years of horrors like “homecore”, “comfort-wear”, and “WFH dressing”. This collection was the antidote: a tailored, corseted, mini-dressed punch of power to the post-pandemic wardrobe, presented on a shiny red runway with a brilliant original soundtrack that mixed what sounded like Versace’s voice with a throbbing and electrifying beat. For its expert dressmaking, the collection was an exercise in perfecting a few simple elements. One was tailoring: Donatella broadening the shoulders and cinched the waists of suits with voluminous trousers, evoking ’80s power dressing through an amplified lens. Skirt suits in tailoring fabrics juxtaposed a skimpy hemline with big, boxy blazers cut at the same length, while skirt suits in tweeds unravelled at the hems in a polished punk way. Throughout, she stuck to her magic body grammar, accentuating shoulders, waist and hips. Then, nearly every look was based on a corset: as minimal bustiers worn on their own; embedded in mini and ankle dresses; as bustiers in tailoring fabric that matched sartorial trousers; built into wool and rubber coats; evoked within long-sleeved dresses as if a waspie had been styled over them; and – most ingeniously – structured into the waist of a puffer jacket that ballooned over it. If the silhouette those corsets created didn’t already make Versace’s models pose up a storm, Donatella underpinned her looks with skin-tight rubber tops and polished latex leggings, cementing the boudoir mood of the collection.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

Remix. Etro AW22

| Design & Culture by Ed

“The question I asked myself is: How can I deal with the prints in a totally new way? I wanted to go out of my body and see things from a completely different angle,” Veronica Etro explained backstage of her autumn-winter 2022 fashion show. “So I imagined aliens coming across our archive in 200 years and looking at them with micro-lenses that are sort of zooming in and blowing everything up. So it’s like zoomed heritage!” With Etro’s heritage looping back via its family-founded roots in Italy during the hippie late 1960s, to a style of shawl named after a Scottish mill town that made a massive 19th-century British Colonial fashion business out of appropriating a precious fabric whose culture belongs to Kashmir, on the border of India and Pakistan – the paisley pattern is always the given medium. Veronica Etro’s conundrum has been to contemporize and reconfigure all of that, expanding the range of what her brand can be without losing its character. “You know, Etro was a lifestyle brand,” she observed backstage. “I think the strength is that it has a strong identity, but at the same time it leaves women open to interpret and to be individual and to personalize. It’s about how we can embrace different personalities – I never wanted to make it homogeneous, to make uniforms.” This time she traveled through boho, arty-crafty knitwear to ’80s puffy-silhouetted patchwork bomber jackets to end up with suave, ’70s crushed-velvet trouser suits and slinky bias-cut black satin dresses. Some of it looked like an Italian version of Isabel Marant – and this isn’t something bad. The paisley registered in various graphic forms – super enlarged to look like an animal-print lining on a shearling aviator jacket, or deconstructed down to its “harlequin” elements, stamped in repeat on a vibrant pink velvet jacket and a semisheer, diaphanous chiffon dress.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

Do You Even Care? Gucci AW22

| Design & Culture by Ed

It’s infuriating how huge brands that preach values of “inclusivity”, “love” and “peace” choose to stay silent in case of Russian invasion of Ukraine. I had a different attitude towards labels that showed their collections and decided to stay silent on the first day of the conflict (like Prada) – everybody was confused. But now is the high time to act, and most of the Western European fashion companies and insiders still pretend to be asleep. Gucci‘s silence is telling – not a single social media post in plain sight that would acknowledge the disheartening situation. Why is that? Kering and other luxury conglomerates are just too scared they won’t sell another pair of shoes to its major customer target, largely located in Russia, which supports Putin’s war crime towards Ukraine. As simple as that.

Alessandro Michele‘s autumn-winter 2022 fashion show failed to share any gesture of solidarity with Ukrainians, even though I thought he would be the first to do that in the industry. Possibly, his good intentions might have been tamed by the upper company structures. The distaste caused by the tone-deafness is one thing. In general, this line-up was one of the most mediocre collections coming from the designer in a while. The message for this collection, entitled “Exquisite Gucci“, was suits for all, with male and female models wearing versions of the Gucci sartorial two-piece. Alongside this focus on tailoring was a collaboration with Addidas Originals, which saw the sportswear brand’s iconic three stripes splashed over sharp cut suits, on leather gloves and baseball caps, or forming a dramatic V down the front of a corset dress. To be honest, most of the looks felt uninspiring, and I feel like we’ve seen enough of fashion collabs with Adidas in the last couple of years.

Back to really important stuff. If you want to spread awareness or help and support Ukraine, here are some useful links:

https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/ways-to-help-ukraine-conflict/

https://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/what-we-do/countries/ukraine

https://www.rescue.org/article/how-can-i-help-ukraine

https://www.gov.pl/web/udsc/ukraina-en

Also, big love to independent, small and medium-sized brands like Magda Butrym, Collina Strada and MISBHV that will donate 100% of its profits to aid humanitarian crisis in Ukraine in the following days. Any action counts, big or small!

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

Sensual Allure. Blumarine AW22

| Design & Culture by Ed

Helmut Newton’s spirit hovered over the Blumarine show. “Always loved his work, how can you not? Always been one of my heroes,” said Nicola Brognano backstage. Newton lensed memorable advertising campaigns for Blumarine; one of the best was shot in 1995, with a young Eva Herzigova clad in a skintight black satin number, slit high to reveal her fabulous legs. Brognano had Herzigova, still breathtakingly gorgeous at 48, close today’s show, nicely coming full circle. You cannot reference Helmut Newton without conjuring dark, sultry atmospheres of intrigue. Brognano is prodding the girly Blumarine ingénue to enter grown-up territory. “She’s more femme and sexual,” he said. His co-conspirator, über-stylist Lotta Volkova, chimed in: “She isn’t so pretty and girly anymore – or at least not only. She has grown into a strong, sexy woman, in command of her body, and powerful. She is a glamorous vamp.” Nocturnal and provocative, the collection was paraded by a cast diverse in age and body type, reflecting the image shift. Lila Moss, Euphoria’s Chloe Cherry, and Mini Anden were among various beautiful curvy figures and willowy, slender silhouettes: all looked equally alluring, clad in a series of skintight, draped micro dresses, each one slinkier, sexier, and skimpier than the other. A bold palette of black, red and purple signaled an erotic detour from the candy pinks and powdery baby blues favored by Blumarine’s teen incarnation. Sweeping long black coats, shapely and nipped at the waist, looked dramatic; in Newton-esque style, faces were sometimes veiled, eyes hidden behind dark glasses. A catsuit in black patent leather with a built-in bustier had an obvious fetish allure; the see-through top with breast-hiding velvet hearts worn by Herzigova in the Newton campaign was remade, as an homage to the Blumarine’s heyday.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.